This paper examines the relation between the business cycle and convergence in levels of total factor productivity (TFP) across states. First, we find evidence of convergence in TFP levels across the different phases of the business cycle, but the speed of convergence was much greater during...

This paper considers the estimation of a dynamic ordered probit of self-assessed health status with two fixed effects: one in the linear index equation and one in the cut points. The two fixed effects allow us to robustly control for heterogeneity in unobserved health status and in reporting...

This paper exploits a unique 2003-2011 large dataset, indexed by Thomson & Reuters, consisting of 17.2 million disambiguated authors classified into 30 broad scientific fields, as well as the 48.2 million articles resulting from a multiplying strategy in which any article co-authored by two or...

This paper assesses the optimality of U.S. fiscal policy from 1960 to 2010. With this purpose, we present a tractable neoclassical economy with a benevolent government and characterize time-consistent, optimal fiscal policy. We then compare the model's prescriptions for income tax rates and...

Since Littlechild (1983)'s report, price cap regulation has been regarded as an effective instrument to mitigate market power when precise information about cost and demand is available. Earle, Schmedders and Tatur (2007) establishes that the comparative static properties of price caps that hold...

Contrary to a recent literature that questions whether price caps are effective, and even sensitive, under demand uncertainty, we show that in the absence of quantity precommitment the effects of a price cap are the same whether the demand is uncertain or deterministic. Next we study the...

Inspired by the empirical work of Holmes (2011), which suggests the economic importance of distribution costs in the firm's optimal location decision, this paper introduces endogenous distribution costs in the model of Hotelling (1929). The proposed model shows an interesting trade-off between...

We show that monitoring by individuals with preferences regarding the outcome of the supervised task interferes with the task's process: the monitors bias the results in favor of their own preferences. In particular, using an original dataset from the 2011 national elections in Argentina, we...

In a market in which sellers compete by posting mechanisms, we allow for a general meeting technology and show that its properties crucially affect the mechanism that sellers select in equilibrium. In general, it is optimal for sellers to post an auction without a reserve price but with a fee,...

Recently, economists have established that culture—defined as a common set of preferences and beliefs —affects economic outcomes, including the levels of female labor force participation. Although this literature has argued that culture is transmitted from parents to children, it has also...